Mount Lucania

Mount Lucania is a mountain in the Yukon territory, Canada. At Template:Convert, it is the third-highest mountain in both CanadaTemplate:Efn and the Saint Elias Mountains. A long ridge connects Mount Lucania with Mount Steele (Template:Convert), the fifth-highest in Canada.

Lucania was named by the Duke of Abruzzi, as he stood on the summit of Mount Saint Elias on July 31, 1897, having just completed the first ascent. Seeing Lucania in the far distance, beyond Mount Logan, he immediately named it "after the ship on which the expedition had sailed from Liverpool to New York," the RMS Lucania.<ref name=Roberts2002>Template:Cite book</ref>

Climbing History

First Ascent

The first ascent of Mount Lucania was made in 1937 by Bradford Washburn and Robert Hicks Bates. They used an airplane to reach Walsh Glacier, Template:Convert above sea level; the use of air support for mountaineering was novel at the time. Washburn called upon Bob Reeve, a famous Alaskan bush pilot, who later replied by cable to Washburn, "Anywhere you'll ride, I'll fly". The ski-equipped Fairchild F-51 made several trips to the landing site on the glacier without event in May, but on landing with Washburn and Bates in June, the plane sank into unseasonal slush. Washburn, Bates and Reeve pressed hard for five days to get the airplane out and Reeve was eventually able to get the airplane airborne with all excess weight removed and with the assistance of a smooth icefall with a steep drop. Washburn and Bates continued on foot to make the first ascent of Lucania, and in an epic descent and journey to civilization,<ref name="venables">Template:Cite book</ref> they hiked over Template:Convert through the wilderness to safety in the small town of Burwash Landing in the Yukon.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Washburn's party was forced to abandon a great deal of gear—more than 1,000 pounds of cameras, surveying equipment and other supplies—on Walsh Glacier. In 2022, an expedition led by U.S. professional skier Griffin Post located Washburn's lost equipment, which had been carried 14 miles from its original location by the glacier. Assisted by officials from Canada's National Park Service and a team of archaeologists, much of the gear was collected and cleaned.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="SI">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Subsequent Notable Ascents

The second ascent of Lucania was made in 1967 by Jerry Halpern, Mike Humphreys, Gary Lukis, and Gerry Roach.<ref name=Halpern1968>Template:Cite aaj</ref>

In April–May 2021, Pascale Marceau and Eva Capozzola summited the peak, the first all-woman team of climbers to do so.<ref name=cbc2021>Template:Cite news</ref>

See also

• List of mountain peaks of Canada

Literature

• David Roberts, Escape from Lucania: An Epic Story of Survival (2002), Simon & Schuster, Template:ISBN.

External links

• Template:Commons category-inline